Thursday, January 27, 2005

A SIMPLE OBSERVATION

Blogger, being a cheap-ass platform, does not give me the capability of categorizing my blogposts, but I’ve made a few observations in the months since I started this little time-sink. One thing I’ve noticed is that the amount of feedback I get from you, my Esteemed Readers, varies widely. Some topics always seem to generate a lot of heat and smoke in the form of comments (although, keyn ayin hora, nothing so far in the way of trolls and other random obnoxiousness). Others seem to drop into the Cone of Silence, where you can’t even hear the crickets.

My posts aboutreligionandfood usually attract a lot of commentary. Conversely, if I throw off a post about feces, I get goornisht. Nada. Zero. Zilch. The Punchbowl Meme, f’rinstance, never seemed to go anywhere. A few comments, sure, but nobody grabbed that bad boy and ran with it.

She Who Must Be Obeyed noticed this some time ago. “Nobody wants to talk about shit,” she said.

I disagree.

But maybe it’s because I don’t talk about shit well. In that arena, I must yield to the Famously Constipated Dooce™, the world’s pre-eminent poopblogger. She rarely opens her blog up for comments, but one of those rare times, I saw that she got, what, 225 comments? On one post? And a turd-related post, at that. So either Heather Armstrong is insanely popular (she is), an extremely talented writer (ditto), or people just love to talk about shit (they do).